Should the friends queue be removed from most, if not all games?

Yes

No

For those who aren't aware, the friends queue basically causes you to get queued for the same team with people who are on your friends list. While this would seem like a good thing, I am proposing to remove it because it's not a good thing for the server overall.

For starters, the friends queue is redundant. There is a party system that you should be making use of if you want to play with friends. There's literally no reason to not make use of the party system. You get a private chat within the party, you can join and leave games together, and so on.

But I said that the friends queue is a bad thing, and here's why. It prevents you from playing against your friends unless you go out of your way to do ensure you're on different teams. Setting aside the fact that I do like playing against friends, this gets ugly when you have a bunch of strong players who happen to be friends in the same lobby.

I would like to introduce a term called "pubstomping." Essentially, this is used to refer to a group of skilled players joining public games, queuing for the same team either via party or sheep, and then proceeding to absolutely demolish anyone and everyone who isn't on their team. If you've played Rose Rush as a solo, or even possibly as a 2 person group recently, you've probably been on the receiving end of a pubstomp. Having such a concentration of good players on one team tends to result in that team winning, and only really doesn't when there's another, similar group on another team.

While pubstomping can be fun and there's nothing really wrong with it, it does sometimes drive newer players away from trying some of the more interesting games on the server. You see this all the time in games like Champions Domination, a game that isn't terribly intuitive and is incredibly overwhelming the first time you play it. If on top of this, you run into a group that's pubstomping in a game like this, it's borderline traumatic. You have no idea what's happening and you're so hopelessly outclassed by everyone on the other team that you really can't do anything. It's not unusual to see scores where one team has 15k points (the winning score) and the other team has one to two players left and barely reaches 4k points, or sometimes doesn't even make it over 1k. You can also see this in Turf Wars games, and Paintball games. As a general rule, more competitive, closer games tend to be more fun for everyone involved. It's more fun to play against other players who are at a similar skill level. Pubstomps are only really ever fun for the people pubstomping, and sometimes not even for them.

Now you may be asking, what does this situation have to do with the friends queue? The issue is that for more skilled players, the friends queue makes pubstomps the default outcome. Unless I go out of my way to avoid it, I will end up on a team that ends up pubstomping because I am a better than average player, and so is almost everyone on my friends list. If the game were to simply randomly queue people, I would have a better chance of playing a more competitive game. If I want to pubstomp, I'll party people and do it.

Because of all of this, I am suggesting that the friends queue gets removed from most, if not all games. Possible exceptions might include games like the NANO games and Mixed Arcade, where there are a lot of different games and people tend to pop in and out. Other possibilities include games like Team SG and Skywars, and possibly Duos for CakeWars. If you have suggestions for other games where friends queue should remain a thing, please do suggest them.

TL;DR:
The friends queue system causes the default outcome of games with good players in them to be pubstomps. Remove friends queue system from most games as it is redundant due to the party system and unhealthy due to aforementioned reasons.

I personally think a solution to the friend queue situation is to have an option in /prefs that says "automatically be on the same team as friends" and you can switch it on and off at any point. I do not think removing it all together is necessary because some people do want to automatically be on the same team as friends.

I was honestly not aware of this feature, and it certainly is not necessary to be at the same time if you're not in a party, and I agree that it will be unfair to play against a bunch of high-level players game after game. To me, it's weird that the friend system takes it for granted that you're gonna play with your friends by being on the same time team.

There are times when I search for a Cakewars game without being at any party, and there are so many times where I see a bunch of good players against the new-players that have just started playing. It's a huge gap between the teams, and I think that removing this feature will make a difference. However, it is fun to play with your friends if you are all up for it, so I agree with @Vytas about having it as a /prefs

So overall, if this was a /pref thing it would be even better, but I'll give this a +1 still.

I do not need to be redundant in stating what the others have said, but also instances I see this happening in team games like Survival Games Team and Skywars Teams. I also do try to actively improve in Cakewars but I can't because I get rushed in under a minute and killed. I can vouch and say that I've experienced this issue many times and it makes the overall experience not very fun.

I personally think a solution to the friend queue situation is to have an option in /prefs that says "automatically be on the same team as friends" and you can switch it on and off at any point. I do not think removing it all together is necessary because some people do want to automatically be on the same team as friends.

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How would this work if the settings were different for two friends? If I had this off and my friend had it on, does my friend end up on my team?

I personally think a solution to the friend queue situation is to have an option in /prefs that says "automatically be on the same team as friends" and you can switch it on and off at any point. I do not think removing it all together is necessary because some people do want to automatically be on the same team as friends.

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That doesn't help anything as pub stomping is still the default. Also, if you want to be with your friends just party them? Is the purpose of this feature to save players the time and effort of typing "./party <player>"? Is it really that annoying to type out? Any player can party any other player if they wish to and it's not like the proposal is to get rid of parties, in fact it's to get rid of a system that basically forces friends into parties. It's redundant and has almost zero purpose other than saving people a few seconds.

Looking at the cons to keeping it: MineStrike, Turf Wars, Super Paintball, DOM, etc. any two-team games are heavily affected by a feature like this. How is any new player supposed to compete with a bunch of experienced players on one team every single round? I've personally experienced this and for six straight rounds of Turf Wars I've been on more or less the same team of players while not being in a party. This feature is killing off any new players that decide to try out these games but instead are deterred by the amount of pub-stomping that doesn't even allow them to get better. I agree with Fall here that this feature is redundant and really only hurts the community. +1

That doesn't help anything as pub stomping is still the default. Also, if you want to be with your friends just party them? Is the purpose of this feature to save players the time and effort of typing "./party <player>"? Is it really that annoying to type out?

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/z also works in place of /party. And if the player is in the same lobby, you only need enough characters to differentiate that name from every other name in the lobby (e.g. /z Fa will work if no one in the lobby other than myself has a name that starts with the letters 'Fa').

Friends queue is one of the most destructive things to have ever existed, doing more damage than any bug or exploit. Party queue alone has done irreversible damage to the core game, and friend queue is just adding insult to injury. If you look at this thread, youll see majority of us commenting are senior or veteran players that have played this for a good amount of time and have invested alot in it, so if we are giving an opinion it might be because the fact that we know what we are talking about, and it carries a certain amount of weight. The developers need to remove it, if the point of the game is to play with friends then there is already the party system, the friend queue is just needless destruction.

I personally think a solution to the friend queue situation is to have an option in /prefs that says "automatically be on the same team as friends" and you can switch it on and off at any point. I do not think removing it all together is necessary because some people do want to automatically be on the same team as friends.

However, it is fun to play with your friends if you are all up for it, so I agree with @Vytas about having it as a /prefs

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After some reflection, I can't agree with this.

As @realmraka stated, that doesn't actually solve the problem if it's on by default. It's also unclear how this would work, would both friends need to have it enabled for it to do anything? That's more ***bersome than just partying the individual. I also think it needlessly complicates a situation that has a pretty obvious solution.

As @realmraka stated, that doesn't actually solve the problem if it's on by default. It's also unclear how this would work, would both friends need to have it enabled for it to do anything? That's more ***bersome than just partying the individual. I also think it needlessly complicates a situation that has a pretty obvious solution.

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Yeah, and that's why this feature is unecessary in my opinion. Maybe some people would like to keep it, but then they can do it in /prefs, but it should not be a "default" thing. I would personally like to see this being removed.

Yes, I agree with this post, I mainly think this should feature should just not be the default. Players should be allowed to play with their friends, but the abuse of this system allows players to relentlessly stomp inexperienced players (as these players generally don't quite have their own friend networks to compete)

x

I actually had no idea that this was actually a feature. To be honest, I just thought that most (okay, all) of the Turf Wars and Paintball games I ended up joining was just a battle against a party of 8 players (give or take).

And, to be honest, I have absolutely no interest in playing any arcade games in Mixed Arcade simply because of how the majority of these games are 2 or 4 teamed games, and I just end up going against one or two other teams that just instantly slaughter literally everyone else in the lobby. When I think of "Mixed Arcade," I used to think of casually playing a lot of fun games. But now, it's more like "Welcome back to- oh wait, never mind. Everyone already died..."

I greatly prefer Nano Games due to how the majority of the games are solo games, and the games that are strictly a 2 team structure usually allow for players to join in while the game is already going on. Thus, when there's a team in, say, sploor, with 6 players in a party, there's still a decent chance that a large amount of the players entering the lobby will not be placed on that team (or will be randomly dispersed based on team size (thus auto queue for parties can quickly become a disadvantage since the system oftentimes allows for team unbalancing to accommodate the party, meaning larger teams easily become outnumbered, which is very useful in Sploor)). Also, in Nano, the only team-based game that I can recall that does not allow for joining mid-game is nano wars (IE micro battles).

Anyways, I give this suggestion a big +1. I mean, why does this feature even exist? I have been playing on Mineplex since 2015, and I have never even heard of this before. And, if I wanted to be on the same team as my friends, I always do /z [ign].

Thinking back on instances of playing against blockades of highly skilled players, it has really become clear to me the negative effects this feature can have on gameplay. In my eyes, there is really no need for this feature. First off, Mineplex is currently in a state in which most games are played most frequently by a tightly knit community who are very skilled at that certain game. Similarly, you only see a few active lobbies in many games. I bring this up to point to the fact that those who play a certain game the most are extremely likely to have played with/against each other many times, meaning that it is highly probable that they have also friended each other. With this friend based team balancing system, it would, as you stated, cause teams to have a high disparity in skill level, with all of the frequent, skilled players concentrated on one team. That being said, can all of these players still join a party and be teamed together regardless of this feature? Of course. However, the problem with this feature is that it works automatically. When joining a party, you are selecting players that you know well to a certain degree, while with the friend based queue, you may be put on a team with someone you barely know if you have an expansive /f list. Basically, without this feature, players can still team up with each other when they want, but it would diminish the evident uneven balancing of skill currently seen. Thank you for bringing this up here, and I will give a +1 to remove this. Have a nice day!

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